http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/20/nyregion/20profile.html

The New York Times

May 20, 2004

PUBLIC LIVES

A Legislator Committed to Election Reform

By Lynda Richardson

MAYBE State Assemblyman Keith L. T. Wright knows something we don't know. Mr. Wright, a Democrat from Harlem, is in such good spirits in his office on West 125th Street, his laughter booming, his arms waving high to punctuate an exasperated point. But why so happy?

In a statehouse characterized by perpetual legislative gridlock, Mr. Wright is the co-chairman of a bipartisan joint committee of lawmakers seeking to overhaul New York's election system, part of a nationwide voter reform mandate after the election mess in Florida in 2000. This can't be a lot of fun.

In getting an updated election system up and running, New York is a slacker, behind many other states. Not exactly a laugh riot.

"If I didn't have a sense of humor, I'd have cracked up long ago," Mr. Wright says matter-of-factly, swiveling languidly in a chair behind a stately desk.

Mr. Wright, 49, says simply that voter reform has been his heart and soul for the last two years. And the slow-poke progress has been frustrating at times, so much so that he frequently summons to mind the inspirational advice of his mother, Constance Wright, now a retired public school principal.

"My mother always told me when you have homework, deal with the hardest stuff first, then deal with the easier stuff,'' he recalls.

Well, Mom, that's exactly what he is trying to do! The committee has been grappling with difficult partisan issues like voter identification and verification. But on Tuesday, the lawmakers' efforts enraged disabled voters who stormed the meeting in wheelchairs; they were angry because access to voting machines had not been discussed. Lawmakers and others were trapped inside the conference room by protesters who blocked the doors with their wheelchairs.

"It was very crazy," Mr. Wright says. "We weren't moving fast enough. I can't blame them.''

And that's the way it's been, sort of like a roller coaster mostly on the downhill stretch. Whoa! Take last week. Mr. Wright had sounded so triumphant, relieved, when Republicans and Democrats on the panel reached their first significant agreement, deciding that first-time voters could use several kinds of documents when asked to show identification at the polls.

A couple of days later, the deal mysteriously unraveled, after Republicans retreated from it. (The panel seems now to have come to a "conceptual agreement" on that issue, he says.)

Despite the wrangling, he is irrepressibly optimistic. "I think it's resolvable. Listen, we are in a field of negotiation and compromise."

His office is crammed with photographs of family and famous people like Wilt Chamberlain and Bill Clinton. There are framed awards and the sort of homey mementos that one accumulates in 12 years as an assemblyman representing central and West Harlem. He proudly lifts up a beat-up stickball bat that he used to swing on the streets of Harlem.

Mr. Wright says he feels driven to press for compliance with the Help America to Vote Act, known as H.A.V.A. Call it personal. He grew up with those vivid images of blacks' being subjected to poll taxes, literacy tests, hosings with water as they tried to register to vote. His mother took him to the March on Washington when he was 9.

"I want to make sure people can vote, that they are enfranchised. I definitely remember the bad old days." He has introduced five H.A.V.A. bills. "This has been my raison d'être."

Mr. Wright, who is 6 feet 1 with graying hair and a deep radio voice, is the sort of lawmaker reporters like to turn to for thoughts. He is plain-spoken, adept at boiling down complicated issues. It doesn't hurt that he is witty, too.

When the federal mandate was ordered, Gov. George E. Pataki appointed an 18-member task force to deal with it. Mr. Wright, a member, wasted no time in criticizing its composition. He called it "too male, too pale.'' Now there is this bipartisan committee. So far, lawmakers have held four meetings.

Mr. Wright stresses that the stakes are too high for New York not to get its act together. He says the state could forfeit $250 million in federal funds if it fails to come up with procedures to improve the election system by the end of the legislative session, set for June. "At this point, New York can't afford to lose a dime,'' he says.

MR. Wright is the son of Bruce M. Wright, a retired State Supreme Court justice in Manhattan. He is the fifth generation of a family with roots in Harlem. His childhood was privileged. He attended private schools - the Ethical Culture School, then Fieldston. He took violin lessons on the Upper West Side, but Harlem was always home. "The neighborhood folks have always kept me grounded."

He lives with his wife, Susan, a fund-raiser at the Studio Museum of Harlem, and their two sons, ages 9 and 16, in the same rent-stabilized, three-bedroom apartment on East 135th Street in which he was raised.

He recalls that when he turned 18, before setting off for Tufts University in Massachusetts and later to Rutgers to study law, he had his heart set on a Fiat Spider convertible as a birthday gift. His mother had something else in mind.

A voter registration card. He has voted in every single election since then.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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